Transcription
Look at how nice and brown that is. Maybe it will be as dry as the Gobi Desert. I don't know how dry the Gobi Desert actually is, but it's a desert, so I assume it's dry. Maybe the Gobi Desert is moist like a chicken.
Hey everyone, how's it going? We're going to roast a chicken today. In fact, we're going to slather a chicken in herby mayo. Uh, and then we're going to roast it.
Um, so if you watch the the Jimmy Fallon show a couple years ago, um, Kevin Bacon was on it and I I had just published this recipe uh on uh my uh on the New York Times for for mayo slathered roast turkey. Uh, and Kevin Bacon followed that recipe for Thanksgiving and said it was the best turkey he'd ever made. Uh, and he wrote my name down on his hand so that he could remember it and tell Jimmy Fallon. Um, so I am technically zero I'm part of Kevin Bacon's body which makes me zero degrees from Kevin Bacon.
Um anyhow, uh normally I would brine this chicken first, dry brine it in order to uh ensure that it stays juicy, um even if you slightly overcook it. Um however, today I'm going to be using the um my friend Chris Young makes this thermometer. It's called the Combustion Inc. predictive thermometer. Um it has like a bunch of sensors down its length so it can tell you exactly the temperature. You don't have to find fish around to find the core temperature uh of the meat that you're cooking. You just stick it in there and it uses an algorithm to tell you what the coldest part of the meat is. Uh it also predicts how long uh it's going to take to cook based on the ambient temperature and based on how fast this temperature is increasing. So it makes it really easy to nail temperatures on things like chicken that are particularly sensitive uh to overcooking.
Um so what I'm doing right now is I'm cutting out the backbone. Um so I'm spatchcocking the chicken. I'm using these heavy duty poultry shears cutting out the backbone of the chicken. Um these days most butchers will do it. In fact, sometimes you can even walk into the supermarket and find um already spatchcocked chickens or butterfied chickens the is the other uh term for it.
Um the advantages of spatchcocking a chicken. So a chicken when you when you see it in its whole state like this and you roast it sort of the traditional way um what you find is that the breast meat is really plump. The legs are relatively thin. Plus all of this is exposed to the heat of the oven. Um whereas the legs and thighs are sort of protected. Um, and so what happens is that the breast meat actually cooks faster uh than the leg meat when you cook it a chicken whole. Um, which is a problem because chicken breast starts to dry out if it gets above like 155 160 or so. Whereas leg meat because it has so much connective tissue uh it needs to cook up to um around 170 180. So spatchcocking actually solves that problem really nicely. So you take out the backbone, you put the chicken this way and you push it down. And so when you do it like this, now your breast meat becomes the thickest part of the chicken. All of this is really nicely exposed to the air. So what happens is that your legs will cook uh at the same rate as the breast. So by the time the breast hits 155, your legs will be done. Um so that's why I love spashing. The other nice thing about spashcocking is it gives you uh some chicken backbones uh to work with when you are making your sauce.
All right. So, we are now going to make our uh herb mayo. In a cup that fits the head of a hand blender, you know, you want the head of the hand blender to just kind of barely fit in there. We're going to spoon in some mayonnaise. For chicken, I'm going to do about a/2 cup of mayo, maybe half to 3/4 of a cup. Uh and then we're going to do an an herb mix. Um so, in this mixture, we're going to do some parsley. We're going to do the old uh you know scarbor fair mix, the parsley sage, rosemary and thyme. This is the mix I'm using right now. You know, you can use whatever sort of herb mix you prefer or no herbs at all. You know, just just doing sort of mayo and lemon juice would be excellent. Mayo with ginger and garlic would be really delicious.
The reason this works is that the mayo, you know, if you've ever made an herb butter and tried to rub it onto like a chicken or turkey, um, what you find is probably what I find, which is that the herb butter looks really nice going on and you can put on like, you know, a pound of butter and it looks really cool coating the turkey, but then as soon as you start roasting it, that butter melts uh, and it all ends up at the bottom of your pan. So, not much of the herb mixture actually stays uh on the turkey or the chicken relative to how much you used. Um, the nice thing about mayo is that, well, it's viscous first of all, and it also doesn't thin out when it starts to heat up. Um, in fact, the egg proteins in mayo are going to help it stick better uh to the surface of the chicken. Uh, so you end up with the herbs really staying nicely in place, so they flavor it a lot better. Uh, and you also get sort of superior browning because of those extra proteins uh in the mayo.
All right, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme. I'm going to go with a couple garlic cloves. We're going to do a pinch of MSG and salt. It's about a 8:1 mixture of MSG to salt, black pepper, and some lemon zest. I know some people say like when you when you when you uh use a microplane on a lemon, you you hold the lemon in place and you move the microplane around like that. I I never understood that. But I always find it much easier to plant the tip of the microplane down here. Take your lemon and just go around like that. It's a lot faster. At least for me. Maybe maybe the other way works for you. We will get this into there.
All right. Now, we're going to take our hand blender. Also a misnomer because I I've used hand blenders a lot and I feel like I only use them to blend hands like 10% of the time. My uh my worst kitchen accident ever actually did involve a hand blender. I was working at a restaurant where we made um a lobster bisque. Uh and the way the way we made the lobster bisque is you would roast lobster shells. Uh and then you would simmer them with um a bunch of sort of aromatics, stock, uh some rice, and then at the end you would blend it all in. So we had this gigantic um industrial version of these was like this tall. If you there's there's an old Calvin and Hobs where like Calvin's mother like is like shoving an octopus into a pot and like a whole bunch of gross things and then she blends it all with a giant blender. It was like that. Um it was powerful enough to completely obliterate lobster shells. Um and I was cleaning it after I used it and I forgot to unplug it. Uh and so I had it upside down and I stuck my finger in the blade to get like the lodged bits of lobster shell off. Uh and the design of this thing was that the button to turn it on was on the bottom was on the top of it like this. So, I had it on the floor. My finger inside it and the button got depressed. Um, and I uh I blended my hand and it was not pretty.
All right, so we got our herb mayo. Sorry, I forgot forgot one of the key ingredients. Scallions. This was a technique my my friend um Charles Kelsey used at uh Cooks Illustrated. He was working on a I think it was an herb turkey recipe. Um but he was making some kind of herb butter. Uh and he found that scallions uh in the herb butter actually really intensified uh sort of the you know the alium and garlic flavor uh in a way that you know it doesn't really taste necessarily like there's scallions in there. They just kind of enhance the the uh the aliiumess of other ingredients in a way that onions and garlic and shallots just didn't do. Um, so I always add some scallions to my um herb butters and herb mayo if I'm going to if I want some some of that uh sort of alium flavor in them.
You know, one of the other nice things about mayo is that it really sort of mitigates um burning uh in marinades. So, you know, so something like some a marinade that has, you know, a fair amount of sugar in it, say like a like a teriyak marinade, if you were to just slather this chicken with teriyaki sauce and roast it, it would get really really dark. Um yum. uh almost burnt. Um if you combine it with mayo on the other hand, whether you do it in the oven or do it on the grill or do it in a skillet, um the mayo kind of protects it from burning. Uh so you can get all the flavors of that sauce and still get some nice charring, but none of the sort of really dark burning flavors that you get.
All right, now we're going to take our mayo and really get it all around. I have a band-aid on this hand, so I'm only going to use my right hand for this one. But, uh, you know, you really want to get in there with your fingers and kind of, uh, I don't know what this is the equivalent of. This is the equivalent. It's like if you've ever if you've ever rubbed a chicken with mayo, that's a lot what this is like. Um, and in the in the words of Kevin Bacon, you you haven't lived until until you've slathered a uh a raw chicken in mayo or raw turkey and mayo. So, that is what we're looking for. We're going to go onto the roasting tray. Kind of spllay this guy out. Sunscreen on a Canadian. Lena, who's over there, uh, just said, um, if you've ever if you've ever put a sunscreen on a Canadian, um, that's what this is like.
One of the other great advantages of spatchcocking a chicken, uh, is that it cooks a lot faster. Um, so you can cook it at a higher temperature. Uh, and it'll cook in about 70% of the time that a chicken would normally take to roast.
All right. So, this I don't have to worry too much about where it goes. I'm just going to shove it in. Make sure that it goes through the the thickest part, but I don't have to land right in the center. It is Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled. Uh, so it'll connect to the uh the screen here. Um, you can also connect it to your phone, of course. Um, but this will go straight into a 425°ree oven. Center rack. I'm gonna set it. I'm gonna cook it, have the alarm go off when it hits 145. Um, so when by the time the chicken hits 145, um, it will continue rising until once we take it out of the oven, we're cooking it really nice and hot. So, it should continue rising until it gets to around 150, maybe 155°. Um, which for me is the ideal temperature for uh for chicken once it's done cooking. um as long as you're getting it above 140 degrees and you're holding it at that temperature for long enough um you are going to pasteurize it. So you are going to um effectively uh kill the the same amount of bacteria as you would um if you get it to instantaneous instantaneously to 165°. So by the time it hits 140 140 bacteria are actively dying. uh by the time it comes out of the oven and rests um you will have about a seven log reduction in bacteria which makes it safe to eat in case people are squeamish about 155 degree chicken. Um anyhow uh we will find out in a few moments how long it's going to take to cook. Um but I will be back uh when the chicken is done.
All right, I lied. So I'm back. Um my predictive thermometer is giving me about a 45minut cook time. Um and it is generally very accurate. So that gives me 45 minutes to uh make the sauce for this chicken.
So, for the sauce for this chicken, we're going to do a real simple uh chicken zu. Um, so I've got a onion, uh, some celery, uh, and some carrot diced up here along with that chicken back that, uh, I've just chopped up into pieces. Oh, there's a cat at my feet. Um, we're going to put it in there in a pot with just a little bit of oil, some light olive oil. Not light olive oil, but sort of everyday cooking olive oil. And we're just going to let this very lightly brown. I I'm not going for like a deep dark brown here. Um I don't really want too much sweetness to develop in those vegetables. Um I just want to take some of the raw edge off of them. Uh so I'm going for a really nice light chicken that I'm going to also uh season with the uh the herbs, the same herbs, uh and some lemon. So I'm just going to let this brown for a couple minutes uh and stir it every once in a while. Uh and so I'll be back in a in a few minutes.
So, we're looking for basically like that. So, not super dark brown. Um, just the raw edge taking off a little bit of coloring on there. Okay. So, for a nice light chicken. I'm going to put my parsley. This is some fresh parsley along with the the stems from the ones I picked. My parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme. If I had a bay leaf on me, I would probably use it too, but I don't. Uh, and then a couple cups of chicken stock. All right, that's just storebought chicken stock. Um, so we're going to bring this to a simmer. Uh, and we're going to let that simmer basically um, bring it up to a boil, turn it down to a bare simmer, and I'm going to let that go basically until the chicken is done, which, uh, is going to be in exactly 41 minutes and 45 seconds. All right, so I will see you then.
All right, so we are down to our last uh 26 seconds here. Um 144 degrees. Uh and as soon as that hits zero, we should be at exactly 145 degrees if uh if our predictive thermometer is predicting accurately, which which in my experience it does. Um and uh then we'll pop our chicken out. Meanwhile, uh this is simmering has been simmering down the whole time. Uh and it's getting ready to be strained while the chicken rests. Three, two, one, zero. Time's up. See where our chicken is. Oh, look at the color on that. Huh. We are at 145° internally on that breast. Um, and our skin looks crispy and delicious. Our herbs have browned. And let's uh take the temperature of the thigh as well, just to make sure. So, if it all went well, then the thighs should be above 170°, 182. So, we're good.
All right. So, now that chicken's going to rest. As it rests, the breast is going to continue rising a little bit in temperature. Uh, and meanwhile, we're going to come over and finish making our sauce. I'm going to strain out all the aromatics that we've been simmering and all the chicken parts that we've been simmering. So, we're going to have a really nice, tasty chicken stock now. And to that I'm going to add squeeze of lemon. Okay, we're going to bring this up to a simmer. I'm also going to add just a touch of soy sauce. Um, you know, for me growing up, we always had soy sauce uh in our gravy, like our Thanksgiving gravy. This is not quite a gravy cuz I'm not going to thicken it up the same way I would a gravy like with a with a r. I'm just going to leave it as a nice thin zoo. But I find that soy sauce is sort of I don't know, for me it's a flavor of childhood, but it also really uh enhances sort of the, you know, the umami of the sauce. Let's taste how it is. Yum. All right, we'll finish it off with some few pats of butter that we're just going to let simmer down in there and emulsify.
So, that chicken's going to rest for um I'd say about 10 minutes or so. Uh, and then, uh, we're going to come back and we're going to carve it and eat. Our chicken has rested. Move it over to a carving board. Look at how nice and brown that is. And we'll see how juicy it is when we cut it in. Maybe maybe it won't be juicy as all. Maybe it will be as dry as the Gobi Desert. I don't know how dry the Gobi Desert actually is, but it's a desert, so I assume it's dry. Never been. Maybe the Gobi Desert is moist like a chicken.
All right. Um, carving a chicken, I like to do the legs first. So, I I hold the legs like this. Just use a real the tip of a knife here, you know, and kind of just You don't really have to do much cutting at all. Like, it should just kind of come apart pretty easily. Just like that, you know. And then if you uh find uh the right part of the joint, you should be able to cut right through. Okay. So, we got our thighs and our drumsticks. So, let's get those onto our plate. You can see how juicy this is, right? I mean, look at that. Look at that. We're dripping. And the herb aroma, um, which you cannot smell, but trust me, it's it's it's intense, like a circus. Jesus Christ. Um, I cut off these little bits um off the sides of the breast and then I just split it right down the middle here right through the heelbone. That's a nice sound, huh? Um, and then we're going to split each breast in half again. Shall we see uh how we did on those breasts?
Now, a lot of people love chicken thighs. Um, and these days thighs are almost as expensive as as uh breasts are. Um, because thighs are very forgiving. You know, thighs and legs are very very forgiving. So, you can overcook them and they're going to be fine. Um, and if you brine a chicken breast also, you know, it can be fine. But as long as you don't overcook a chicken, you know, I prefer chicken breast to be honest these days. Um, because I've learned how to cook it properly. And when you have like a fancy thermometer like that, like the predictive thermometer, uh, it's really almost impossible to overcook your chicken. Um, so you end up with breast meat that is extremely juicy and tender. Let's try some. All right. Add some parsley. Of course, if you do want this to be, you know, more of a gravy, you can always make yourself a um a little r, you know, a flour and butter paste, uh, and then whisk this into it. Or you can use something like Wondra flour to, uh, thicken it up. You could even use like a cornstarch slurry and thicken it up that way if you prefer. But, um, I find for for a dish like this, um, it's perfectly fine to just have like a kind of loose loose juice.
All right, let's dig in. Now that we're sauced up, I'm going to start with some of this uh dectable breast meat. Can a man not enjoy his dectable breast meat? M. It's dectable. Now, let me try some of this juicy leg. lemony, herby, and delicious. You can see how when it came out of the oven, there's very little drippings in the pan. There's some oil that dripped out, some chicken fat that dripped out. Um, but there's very little of the actual herb mixture. Whereas, if we had done this with butter, all of that would have dropped right down into the pan. Um, all of the herbs end up sticking to the chicken. You can see how nice and brown it got. All that brown browning is flavor. All those herbs on there are flavor. Um, it's a really delicious way to cook chicken. uh mayo in the marinade. Uh I do it with chicken, I do it with turkey. Um and I think it comes out great. When we're using a thermometer like this, uh like the combustion ink predictive thermometer, you don't need to uh brine it because you're going to nail the temperature every time. You also don't need to guess when you're when your dinner's going to be ready. Um it'll tell you like down to the second uh when your chicken's going to be done.
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